


dona nobis pacem

by dragonsong (NekoAisu)



Series: im just a little creacher,,, [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bad Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Fanart, M/M, Major Character Injury, Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Primals (Final Fantasy XIV), Tempering (Final Fantasy XIV), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unnamed Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Whump, this is for u surficage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 04:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/dragonsong
Summary: They do not have a paper, nor a crier or any other newsfolk, but everyone still knows without a doubt:The Crystal Exarch has gone mad.





	dona nobis pacem

**Author's Note:**

> "give us peace"
> 
> surfacage killed me with https://twitter.com/surfacage/status/1189895370320404480  
this is for u  
im cryin

They do not have a paper in the Crystarium, nor a crier or any other newsfolk with which to deliver assorted information to all. However, despite this and all other underdeveloped facets of the bastion city, everyone knows without a doubt:

The Crystal Exarch has gone mad.

They do not need headlines in sharp-smelling ink to believe it, having been haunted by fanciful offers of adventure the moment they rest their heads for nigh on a fortnight. There is a whisper of promise carried on the wind that they can _taste._ It is heady and familiar as if wrought from worn scripture. Whenever someone says they know it, recognize it, there is a note of terror to their confession.

The Warrior of Darkness has fallen. They who speak in tongues and borrow his voice are but a ghost built from desperation and aether. The Exarch knows it is madness to reside hand in hand with a facsimile of godhood, but he does it gladly, hood ever up and obscuring his face. They need not ask him why—not when they can see the edges of shimmering, blue tear tracks beginning to blend into the steadily spreading crystal of his curse—and seek to avoid doing so for fear of finding themselves face to face with a broken man.

There are no sightings outside the Tower, the Exarch and his little toy god happily locked up together in the recesses of Allagan royal suites, but the people know. They grieve for the man they knew and the love that killed him.

There is no adoration for their half-savior, not when his demise has brought their only hope for survival down to his knees in prayer. With every word that rings hollow in the air, their hatred grows.

“The Exarch is recuperating,” they have been told by the guard. “His strength was sorely tested.”

_“By who,” they ask, “and how? What could prove so taxing to a man who leapt through time?”_

And though there has been no spoken answer, they know. From the moment the Tower flickered, aether sputtering and flickering in protest to an invisible strain, they knew. The sky simply agreed with a blinding rush of neverending Light.

The day the Warrior of Darkness fell, so too did their Exarch’s heart shatter. His Tower, the symbol of his life and blessing of protection, had nearly faded from their sight. They felt the echoes of battle in the groaning and creaking, worried for his health when fissures rained flakes of crystallized aether down upon them, but he had returned. He was not hale, but they had assumed he was _whole. _What an oversight, that. 

They learned quickly that the Exarch is mad over love. What an end for such a visionary, to be tempered so (though, for some, they say it is not separate from his adoration. That devotion is one and the same). The creature he calls by name and laughs with is volatile in how it smiles and jokes back, an old friend come home, with far fewer scars and none of the trauma from the time after the Crystal Tower’s doors had shut back on the Source. He has built his own coffin and proceeded to tuck himself in as if _comfortable _living within a blue-gold bubble of fable and falsehood.

For those who have known him, it is nauseating. 

For those who knew the one he lost, it is infuriating. 

“Stop this,” Alisaie pleads, voice muffled through the doors of the Ocular. “You know better than most that this is not what he would want.”

She has been there every day for a month. Alphinaud has visited, but it is Alisaie’s persistence that has run her ragged where all others have stopped. Teleporting between the Inn’s aethertye and that of the Crystarium has eaten away at her Gil same as her energy, but still, she persists. Behind the locked doors, the fake that wears her friend’s face leans his head against the Exarch’s own with a dull _thok. _

They do not answer.

(A little part of her is jealous that the Exarch can turn off his cares for the rest of the world so thoroughly as he does for the sake of his fabricated hero. What she would not give to be so singlemindedly greedy.)

The Scions wish to grieve. They have his body, the casket, knowledge of the badly penned will left in his inn room to the left of his aetheryte earring, but they lack the person they know the Warrior would most love to send him off. Alisaie is not the only one waiting. However, no matter what they ply the Exarch with, he does not allow them the concession of allowing their friend to rest, or releasing the (for all intents and purposes) Primal who has been made to wear his face. 

They were there when he fell and in the moments after. Ryne could not stop the Light, Alphinaud’s magic too feeble to seal the wounds torn into being across the Warrior’s body, and the Exarch... what could he do so far from the Tower? And so they had watched, helpless, as Emet-Selch brought his grand fury to bear against their faltering aegis. Watched him shatter and collapse to his knees time and time again until it becomes a mercy when he does not yet rise. 

But it is not his last stand. 

With axe in hand, he leverages to his feet once more. There are no defined steps, no head held high, no righteous fury. Where stories had said he was indomitable, terrifying, _untouchable─_this person is not him. This bleeding, dying warrior is mortal and just as flawed as all the rest and yet the world is stacked upon his shoulders as if his bones will not be ground to dust in the shadow of its magnitude. 

He takes one step and then another, feet slipping and scuffing along the ground, and then stops. He hefts the axe, palms sticky-slick with blood, but can do no more. 

Hades laughs at his struggle and the sound reverberates in the cage of his ribs. What bitter mockery it is to see his friend-turned-enemy struggling to stand. Hydaelyn’s Champion is nothing but a husk at his feet, soul sundered and aether long since spent. He reaches out and very carefully snuffs out the overflowing Light with a practiced hand. This will be his final victory against Her Champion. 

This is his final elegy for a friend. 

And then, in a show of pity, he allows the body to stay whole. He rescinds his darkness, the many, _many _masks and names and memories he carries, and steps down to pay his respects. The Exarch does not allow him that liberty, for the moment his feet all but brush the ground, the aether of his domain _shivers. _

He had not designed the Allagans to have such comparable power to that of his creation, but (then again) he had not accounted for the mistakes of late royalty nearly turning his plans to cinders. The Crystal Exarch fumbles his way toward his fallen friend and pulls his body into his arms, hands trembling but face blank. He calls to him, desperate. His voice cracks. 

Emet-Selch smiles. At least, for once in all his ages and eons, something just as wretched as he is mourning their loss. He waits and he watches. Detached. 

(A part of him resents the hand that suffocated that Light, but that is the same part of him that has been around since Amaurot rose around his ears. He is not so willingly naive, anymore.)

The aether trembles and shakes in fits and starts and the crystal creeping its way up the Exarch’s cheek slides a little further outward. He holds the Warrior close to his heart, a hand resting on his head as if to _protect. _What could he do for a body that is devoid of life, truly? No matter how tightly he holds him, no matter the silent prayers he devotes tot he Twelve, it will all be for naught. 

Sitting there with the bloodied crest of the Warrior’s head tucked under his chin, the Crystal Exarch cries. The entire First follows suit. 

The crystal lances up and onto his yet untouched cheek and spiders outward like cracks on fine china. It does not consume him in full, but there is a dullness to his grief mirrored in the wide-eyed wildness of his disbelief. The Warrior cannot be dead. There is no way. 

But the body in his arms gives no sputtering breaths, no soft whispers of stubborn aether. It is empty. 

And every effort he has made turned to waste. 

There is no clear shift where his mourning turns to rage, but by Hydaelyn’s will it is _felt. _The quaking becomes pressure and a crushing embrace that screams in intrinsic tongues, _“You will never have atoned enough for this sin.” _

When the might of the Crystal Tower is brought to bear, there are few who could oppose it. The cost is great, though, and there is a hardening of more than feet and back and hips, but even that of heart. 

If the Warrior of Darkness has died, so too has the man called G’raha Tia. 

And so, the Crystarium mourns. The Scions mourn. The false god ever lives. 

**Author's Note:**

> i am just a little creacher,,,,, please give me comment,,,,,
> 
> hmu on:  
tumblr | https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/  
twitter | twitter.com/FlamingAceKiri  
discord | NekoAisu#7099


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